Congrats, dear Gianluigi Segalerba

Poverty is not just a lack of money; it is not having the capability to realize one's full potential as a human being.

Economic growth without investment in human development is unsustainable - and unethical.

A society can be Pareto optimal and still perfectly disgusting.

Amartya Sen

Famines are usually associated with political and state failures, which occurs primarily in non-democratic, autocratic states. These causes are deeply rooted in national system contexts that are difficult to influence from outside. Therefore, international food aid is always only a last resort, where a national cause therapy would be required.

See also:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321058935_Steuern_in_Fragilen_Staaten_-_Empfehlungen_fur_die_Entwicklungszusammenarbeit

Dear Segalerba,

Congratulations for flagging an important issue. As informed, you are focusing on three themes-

1. Sen’s criticism of the thesis of food shortages as the (only) cause of famines.

2. Famines happening when there is no political will that want to fight against the factors bringing to the famines. Persons, and not nature, are responsible for the occurring of famines.

3. Sen’s defense of democracy as a system which is compatible with economic growth against all those who considers democracy as an obstacle to economic growth.

A few observations-

1) Famine, a socio-economic crisis, surfaces in form of starvation, poor nutrition, epidemic, and increase in mortality.

2) Famines may be attributed to crop failures, droughts, epidemics, and human-related factors, poor mitigation capabilities.

3) Historically, all the above factors were quite strong.

4) What Amratya Sen has articulated about famines is more relevant to post scientific renaissance period, particularly post 19th century, which incidentally all saw rise of democracy worldwide and development of science and technology.

5) The problem with the approach of reducing the number of famine causing factors is that it may lead to restricted and less robust socio-economic models.

6) Assigning famines predominantly to lack of polical will (person or system like democracy etc.) in place of nature (drought , pendemic, etc.) pose a set of interesting questions. Are we trying to say that the political system/leadership in the past were least concerned with the consequences of drought, OR they were incapable?

7) What if the scientific renaissance had not taken place? Whether the will or capabilities of the present day leadership (including the democratic leadership) in tackling drought is not leveraged by the science and technology?

8) The present day human society is equipped with science & technology assisted agricultural processes/ practices, good infrastructure, multimodal connectivity, storage, and food processing techniques.

9) The poor performance of autocracies is not restricted to famines alone.

10) My suggestion is that the focus area may also include role of science and technology which had helped the humanity to mitigate famines in an effective manner. Further, role of nature may not be written off altogether.

If the participants have interest in my work, we could follow each other, in case we are not already mutual followers.

At the present stage of development of the problem of environmental protection, a new concept was born - environmental safety, which is understood as the state of protection of the natural environment and the vital environmental interests of a person, primarily his rights to a favorable environment. The scientific basis of all measures to ensure the environmental safety of the population and rational nature management is theoretical ecology, the most important principles of which are focused on maintaining the homeostasis of ecosystems and preserving the existential potential. N.F. Reimers in 1990 defined the global ecological crisis as a direction, a state in the relationship between human society and nature, characterized by a discrepancy between the production forces and production relations of human society, and the resource and biological capabilities of the biosphere.

The crisis of the appropriating economy is considered the first ecological crisis. The way out of the crisis was found in the transition to collective hunting and the division of labor between the participants. The second crisis is connected with overfishing of large animals. The way out was found in the transition from the appropriating economy to the producing one. The development of agriculture determined the progress of mankind for millennia. The third crisis is associated with the complete deforestation and the excessive burden of primitive agriculture. The fourth crisis is associated with the scientific and technological revolution. All components of the biosphere must be protected not separately, but as a whole as a single natural system. According to the federal law on “environmental protection” (2002), the main principles of environmental protection are: observance of human rights to a favorable environment, rational and non-wasteful use of natural resources, conservation of biological diversity, payment for nature use and compensation for damage to the environment, mandatory state environmental expertise, the priority of preserving natural ecosystems of natural landscapes and complexes, respecting the rights of everyone to reliable information about the state of the environment. The most important environmental principle is a scientifically based combination of economic, environmental and social interests (1992) UN International Conference in Rio de Janeiro.

There are complex interactions between the natural environment and society, as well as the exchange of energy and matter. Human impact on nature can be classified in various ways. For example, divided into destructive, stabilizing and constructive; into direct and indirect; into the intentional and the unintentional. On the other hand, nature constantly affects man. Man is connected with nature by his origin, existence, his future. The human natural environment has influenced and still influences the formation of the biological species Homo sapiens, races and ethnic groups. The territorial settlement of people, their material activity, the distribution of production forces depend on the quantity, quality and location of natural resources.

The expanding use of natural resources due to population growth and the development of scientific and technological progress leads to their depletion and increased environmental pollution with production waste and consumption waste. That is, the deterioration of the natural environment is due to the reduction of natural resources and pollution of the natural environment.

It should immediately be noted that the higher the level of use of extracted natural resources, the lower the level of environmental pollution. Consequently, by solving the problem of rational use of natural resources, society, firstly, saves natural resources from depletion, and secondly, reduces environmental pollution.

Unbalanced relationship between society and nature, i.e. irrational use of natural resources often leads to an ecological crisis and even an ecological catastrophe.

If modern economic and political practices are maintained, industrial growth and the consumption of resources and energy will continue to increase at an accelerating rate until a certain limit is reached. Then disaster will happen. The cause of the crisis is population growth and a social mania for growth, when at every level (individual, family, class, national) one goal is set - to become richer and more powerful, without taking into account the cost of exponential growth.

Attempts to predict the future of the whole world on the basis of mathematical models and computer technology have led to the emergence of a new interdisciplinary direction - global modeling. The World Conservation Strategy was adopted.

Environmental monitoring (environmental monitoring) is a system for monitoring, evaluating and predicting the state of the natural environment surrounding a person. The ultimate goal of environmental monitoring is to optimize the relationship of man with nature, as well as the ecological orientation of his economic activity. At the turn of the II and III millennium AD. e. there is a paradigm shift in human thinking and practical activity – economic priorities are replaced by ecological ones. The economic imperative that prevailed until the end of the 20th century is increasingly being replaced by an ecological one. It is on whether humanity will be able to achieve a reasonable combination of economic and environmental interests in the near future that its future depends on.